I was listening to NPR today and they were talking about farmers asking the FDA to allow them to sell meat, milk, etc. from cloned animals. The FDA hasn’t quite made up their mind on the matter yet, and NPR interviewed someone from one of the consumer advocacy groups who said that while there probably was no danger from consuming cloned animal products, the reaction of most people to that idea was, “Yuck!” I find that kind of hard to believe.
I can understand people being wary of eating genetically engineered foods, like say, tomatoes with fish genes inserted in them, but cloned animals aren’t all that different than ordinary animals. So, would you do it?
I realized a long time ago that in this day and age I’m far removed from my food to begin with. And what’s more, I don’t really care. As long as it tastes good and isn’t putting me at any (additional) risk, why would I care?
I’ve never really thought about it, but I don’t guess I’d have a problem with it. You know how when you make a photocopy, and then you make a photocopy of the photocopy, and then you photocopy that, and you keep going while each successive copy gets fuzzier and fuzzier, until you finally end up with something completely unusable that looks nothing like the original? From what I understand, cloning is nothing like that.
Almost all of the farm raised animals (and vegetables for that matter) today have been genetically modified. You don’t think you could go back 10,000 years ago and find a Rhode Island Red or an Angus cow or even an ear of sweet corn in the wild now do you? They just bred and selected them out the slow way. I am for anything that improves on this process. I have probably eaten something that was an identical twin, a clone, sometime in my life already. So a definite “yes” for me.
Slight hijack, but what is the benefit of eating cloned animals?
Although if they can make a pig that makes the world’s most perfect bacon and only 5 calories per thick, delicious slice, I’m all for cloning that pig. Even better if it’s like that pig from the Garden of Eden in The Simpsons. Then we’d only need one.
Otherwise, I’m kinda having a hard time wrapping my brain around the expense involved in cloning an animal only to be on the slaughterhouse floor a short while later.